Multimedia

You can download the manual from Fujitsu. Just point your browser towards

Product select "Tablet PC", Series is "Stylistic" and the Model is "Stylistic 3400". That will take you to the download page. I have two tablets that I bought on eBay - a 3400 and, more recently, a 3500. On both I installed a Netgear PCMCIA wireless card along with an optical USB mouse. I have Tcl/Tk installed on both (I do virtually all of my HA programming in Tcl) and this has turned out to be a fairly inexpensive way to put control units around the house. I use them for controlling the whole house audio (Channel Plus MDS-6 units), HVAC control and monitoring (via an HAI OmniPro) and security camera control (simply controls an ATV DPX16 mux which then displays on the televisions, not the 3400). All of these apps seem to be as zippy as they are on my main PC. All in all, I've been quite happy with both units. The 3400 does have a dead area on the touchscreen that I discovered too late to return it, but since I do most of the control with the mouse, it really doesn't matter. Once you're up and going, though, you probably will want to do a full check of the unit just to make sure it is as it should be.

Dave

Thanks, Dave - found that and the generic FAQ a little earlier and have been reading through. Any idea how to program the programmable function key on the bottom edge? I see references to it but no details on how to actually do it. It's the second danged mystery key I've run into this month!

I got spooked when the FAQ talked about batteries for the stylus - apparently that's something specific to previous generations. The tablet came preloaded with W2KPro (although the label on the bottom implies it was born a WIN98SE machine).

The specs on the Fujitsu page say only "USB" with no verison number but I have been able to connect a WD120GB external drive, a USB mouse and a USB keyboard without any problems.

I really thought the unit came with a LAN jack. Some of the older reviews I read referred to one being on board however I've learned that it's only active through one of the docking stations. A LAN port would have been more useful than a built-in modem. I am not sure whether to use a PCMCIA LAN card or a USB to LAN adapter. I haven't tried a USB hub yet but will after I get a USB test program onto the machine. I lost my PCMCIA to CF adapter and didn't buy a floppy drive so moving things on and off is still a little dicey. I've been using my USB wristwatch but it looks like I'll finally have to get a large capacity thumbdrive and/or the special Fujitsu floppy for the unit.

Worse, still, I don't know how I am going to be able to Ghost the built-in hard drive since there's no floppy and Ghost sometimes refuses to write to USB drives, depending on the USB chipset. That will be my project for tonight so that I don't inadvertently blow away the software that came on the machine.

It's really, really tempting to go wireless, but it's going to be stuck on a wall so I'll probably just get a LAN PC card.

Tcl/Tk? Unix tools? What OS are you running?

My workhorse machine's a 500MHz AMD so the 3400 seems plenty fast. I intend to use it as a control screen for HA and to play music. It seems more than powerful enough to do that. The docs talks about a Zoom video PCMCIA card. Do you know anything about that?

I would never have thought of "dead spots" on the touch screen. I'll scan for those tonight, as well. My impression of this unit is that it spent most of its life in the case. Very little wear - no scratches on the screen, a little distress at the pen slot that could have been caused by UPS - that's a really weak corner - and the labels on the bottom are all crisp and not smudged, smeared or worn. Even better is that the unit runs off AC without a battery present. I've had more than a few laptops that wouldn't. Got two LithIon batteries thrown in that still seem to hold a charge, but I won't be needing them. I will probably wire it to a set of three 6V 12AH batteries and a float charger since it required 16VDC at 3A if I read the charger label right.

Do you use screen protectors with your unit? I'm tempted to, but I think I'll end up running the unit via USB mouse - maybe even wireless since I don't want any cords coming from the front of the unit.

Thanks for the input, Dave,

-- Bobby G.

Yeah, i created 800x600 screens, to map to the 800x600 native resolution.

These are my screens:

This forum has folks' CQC screens. Any 800x600 one would be renderable on the 3400: Specifically look for ones by Ripper & ellisr63 - i'm pretty sure they both have 800x600 versions.

Dave also answered, afraid I can't as I got a dock, which has the PS/2 keyboard & mouse inputs. I got it for the base station for the MBR 3400, and I just plop the wallmount one into there and plug in a mouse/keybd when I want to muck with stuff. That's pretty dang rare, the keyboard & mouse typically sit in the attic storage area.

I discovered this too. Before I bid on the unit, I downloaded all the docs I could find and one of the Fujitsu docs indicated that the LAN was built in. Even after I found out otherwise, it still seemed like a good deal. I did price docking stations but they were more than I wanted to pay. Besides, I wanted the LAN to be active if I was moving around with the tablet so wireless really seemed the way to go.

Both tablets came preinstalled with Win2K (I suspect we both purchased from Laptop Enterprise, since they are the biggest 3400 supplier on eBay). Tcl runs on just about everything, which is one reason why I use it. You can get a really good distribution of Tcl (or Perl, or Ruby or...) for various OS flavors by downloading from

I generally just go ahead and install an interpreter on the target system although it is fairly easy to convert Tcl scripts into a standalone executable.

I thought seriously about getting the screen protectors but ended up not doing it. Most of the time, the tablets just sit in a small plexiglas stand that I made for them. In this mode, I generally just use the small USB mouse to control things. About the only time I use the stylus is when I'm doing a grocery shopping list; I have a small Tcl app that allows me to select an item from a list of stuff I normally buy and add it to the current shopping list. When it prints out it's ordered by asile in the store (I

*hate* grocery shopping - anything that speeds it up is a plus). Maybe if I was using the stylus for a lot of things it might be different. Besides, I could be wrong, but I suspect these are nothing more than thin sheets of mylar for $9.95 - the same thing you could get at Staples or Office Depot for about fifty cents.

One other thing I forgot to mention; when I was first looking for docs, I came across a Fujitsu Stylistic 3400 Discussion Board at:

As you might expect, it's fairly low volume, but it might be a good place to check if you have really specific questions.

Dave

Your "art-based" design is truly "shi+ hot!" I'm very impressed. While I like the brushed aluminum look, your interface design is a lot more accessible to the the non-geeks of the world. Your webpage caught my wife's eye from across the room. Obviously it's not the sort of geek stuff she sees me surfing most of the time. Thanks for turning me on to Vladstudios, too!

I've been rummaging through the CQC site for the last 24 hours looking at all the possibilities. Might even pick up a second 3400 today since this one's passed muster.

-- Bobby G.

Here are some more that a guy has been working on as part of his automation business. They look quite nice:

Definitely in the 'clean/modern' genre. His web site is here:

The stuff above is under the Interfaces link on the left.

------------------------------------- Dean Roddey Chairman/CTO, Charmed Quark Systems

Yes. I felt a little misled by their docs. There are "fast dock" connectors on the bottom of the unit that probably contain the LAN signal which I understand does get generated inside the unit, it just doesn't get sent anywhere except the docking connectors. If can find the pinout specs I could build my own docking cradle, at least for the metal fingers. A row of brass round-head screws would make good enough contact, I think. Might not reach 100Mbps because of the length of untwisted connection but 10Mbps would be fast enough. I suspect that port was "gonna be" a LAN port but at the time they decided that a modem would be a more effective use. Given when these were "born" that was probably a good assumption. Broadband was still very limited.

Yes. I'd be tempted to use wireless if I hadn't bought the sucker for wall mounting. But my last foray into wireless upset my cordless phones AND my CCTV wireless cams, so I took all the gear back.

I gotta say, walking about the dark house at night with the glowing tablet playing an MPG makes me feel a little like an electronic Moses. There's something magical about a PC that's so small and self-contained. They probably never took off because people never got to try one for a while to realize how useful they are for a variety of things. I'm tempted to get a car cord and a GPS card and make a "travel" rig that I can use in either of my cars or in a friend's when traveling. Not sure how readable that screen will be outside, though.

Good guess. They're selling one with a duff digitizer for about half price. I'm sorely tempted because a USB mouse is just as easy to use. I have an old touch pad mouse that I might try to attach to the unit. I really wish it had a combo PS/2 port like my Compaq so I could use a splitter and conventional input devices. If I do decide to mount some more around the house, I probably will spring for either a replicator or a docking station.

I checked them out at their sourceforge site. Looks interesting but might be beyond skills.

I have an Access app that handles all my shopping like that, including priority fields in case I am running out of time. We have an Internet grocer here and I hate shopping *so* much that I've signed up even though the prices are high and the selection is low.

Since I have boxes of various sheet protectors, I think I'll try working with those first, although, like you, I don't anticipate doing much stylus work.

Neat. Maybe they know both the pinouts on the two bottom connectors and how to program the mysterious programmable function key. I've been futzing with it and am beginning to think it's there, but they never got it working. Thanks for your input, Dave.

-- Bobby G.

Really nice work, but not as interesting as IVB's work for a number of reasons. The menu screens he's developed, like the one with the soap bubbles, not only seem to be easier to understand and more friendly to non-geeks, he's made the buttons different sizes and uses size to indicate the more frequently used functions. That flies in the face of standard interface design where all controls are equivalent but in my view it is superior because page after page of similar looking screens and buttons tend to merge into each other.

Typically, the most frequently used controls would be placed at the top of a list, but I like the larger buttons better. They instantly and unambiguously communicate which buttons are the ones you're most likely to press. The strong design elements on each menu screen also made it very clear what screen you're on and that's something that the high-tech looks tend to do poorly. They all look very much alike and human factors engineers claim that's an invitation to press the wrong buttons. It would be hard to confuse the soap bubble screen with something else and that, to me at least, is a very good thing in an HA control system (or any control system, for that matter).

-- Bobby G.

Thx dude. I specifically pursued an "art-based" design b/c of my desire to satiate the following non-techie relatives:

- Wife, who is a marketing person with a psych degree

- Wife's best friend, and most common babysitter we got, who's an actor and is confounded by his iPod.

- Mother-in-law, who's a montessori school teacher and still won't use an ATM or put gas in the car

- Father-in-law, who's an architect

- Brother-in-law, who's a schoolteacher

- BIL's wife, who's a real estate agent and prides herself on her ignorance.

I was looking for something 'accessible' to that contingent, all the regular stuff seemed too clean and sterile.

Montessori schools? Actors? You must be a Californian! :-)

I've deployed a number of computer systems professionally and one can never underestimate the value of a "buy in" feature. People hate upgrading OS's so the last time we did it, we switch to laptops and docking stations so that employees could take their machines home. They were fighting to be the first to upgrade.

In your case, the "buy in" comes from a feeling of simplicity coupled to the sentimental charm of a child's school painting stuck on the refrigerator. That removes a lot of the intimidation non-techie users feel about new automation systems. Robotic designers have realized the importance of making robots that have an emotional appeal. It's often the difference between seeing the the glass half empty or half full and rejecting or accepting a new system.

I've been watching a program about Leonardo DaVinci and it clearly illustrates how his art benefitted from his engineering knowledge. The built a replica of his 500 year old glider he designed from observing birds and actually got it to fly further and longer than the Wright Brothers. DaVinci would have liked your design choices, I'm sure, because they marry art and engineering into a unique machine.

-- Bobby G.

Hi Bobby, I have listened to Art of Noise for years... hard to find anything on CD though. The screens are ab ongoing project as CQC keeps coming out with new features... and I keep adding them too. Originally I spent about a week to get them up and running. I am currently refining them to get the number of templates down. It was up to 100 screens the other day and now I'm down to 81 and slowly getting them down more. Ron

I now have both a Fujitsu Stylistic 3400 and a 3500. Eric is quite correct that the stylus is purely mechanical, not electronic as I wrote. But turns out that I was correct that "if you touch it with your finger, or a celery stalk, or a pencil [eraser], nothing useful happens".

Pressing as hard as I dare with my finger, nothing happens unless I use the sharp edge of my fingernail. So, in general, you do need some sort of a pointed tool. The styli that come with the 3400 and 3500 are passive (not electronic) so there is no click or right click or double click except what you can do via taps and (apparently) a built-in right-click icon that does not yet seem to work on my tablets.

Launching an object on the screen by double-tapping with my fingernail is problematic at best. In practical use, for me this means needing to have some sort of a stylus to avoid frustration.

So the Stylistic 3400 and 3500 are not "touch screens" in the sense of being able to "touch" the screen with one's finger and make something happen. This may be a distinction without meaning or consequence for some folks, but in a public setting (I've installed a touch screen in a museum, for example) the Stylistic tablets would be unacceptable in my opinion. They are also too fragile for public use although fine in a home setting with bit of accommodation/training and care.

HTH ... Marc Marc_F_Hult

Paranoimia....

[Best of AoN used to be my favorite album, still got it.]